Mapo Tofu Bento (221)

Lately I am just walking around or driving and suddenly I remember something I forgot to blog about. Like last night I was driving home and just as I hit Red Hill I realized I forgot yet again to blog about my thoughts on the super duper magnificent omg wonderful Lost finale.

I am a bit torn as to which scene to post since there were four that I considered incredible, but I finally settled on the Goodbye Kiss.

Okay seriously, oh my god. And I thought Sawyer couldn’t get any hotter. Other greats for me included Penny and Des reunited, Ben sobbing as he moved the island, and of course the now infamous ending scene between Jack and Ben. The one that made me laugh the most was probably in the very beginning though, when Ben told Locke, “You couldn’t find the anthuriums, could you?” “I didn’t know what they looked like!”

I found this fantastically amusing, but this is probably because I grew up in the floral industry on the Big Island, where wanting to die at the sight of anthuriums is very common. Hey, you try staying up til 2 am making tropical Costco bouquets in the freezing winds of Mountain View. My brother will get a chuckle out of that.

My family has caved into the peer pressure and acquired a Wii, much to the delight of Buddy, who thought Wii Boxing was awesome. We had to start keeping the wiimote on top of the tv where he can’t reach it after he was sighted hammerfisting the nunchuck and wiimote into the hallway walls. He’s such a hallway bully.

If you were going about your business a few nights ago and suddenly heard a high pitched screech, that was probably me. I’m sitting in the living room when I hear, “Um, should he have that?” I look up and Buddy has opened my bento accessories drawer and somehow taken out my cottage cheese tub of precious soy sauce bottles. My immediate reaction was to yell, “BUDDY, NO!” and it was as if I’d set off some alarm in his head that any mischief to be done had to be done immediately or not at all. He thrust his grubby little toddler paw into the tub and began to flurry his fingers around like a cake mixer gone psycho. Piggies and fishies and pandas and flowers and carrots went flying in every direction.

I was not happy.

Okay, so… my bento contest. I hadn’t said what I was giving away, but now I have a picture so you can all scramble to enter!

Click that for a bigger picture. Tally:

1 pink two tier bento box with a cute wolf on it

1 yellow two tier bento box with a cute bear on it

1 green Hello Kitty bento box with fork

1 black lacquer round bento box with berries design

1 pack zoo animal food dividers

1 penguin hot dog cutter

1 set of sea animals food picks

1 mini rice paddle

1 pack pastel sushi grass

1 onigiri mold (cylinder shape)

1 set Hello Kitty soy sauce bottles

1 onigiri mold (large flower)

1 set of chopsticks

2 wine bottle soy sauce bottles

2 piggie soy sauce bottles

2 fishies soy sauce bottles

1 yellow Putifresh banana cup

1 Charmmy Kitty bento bag

Oh yes, this bento prize pack is totally filled with awesome sauce! If this doesn’t inspire you to submit an entry, you need your head examined. I mean this in a good, concerned fellow bento fan way.

Mr. Pikko was ill yesterday, so this was my cue to dart down to Marukai to raid their new stock. I went a little cuckoo. 🙁

Click for big version! I ended up with 8 new boxes, two bags, cookie cutters, food picks, BENTO STRAPS (omg they never have those), onigiri molds, cute disposable bento boxes, and soy sauce bottles. You see that red one on the right side? It’s obviously for a triangle musubi but I was like, WTF? Are there monster sized onigiri that I’ve never heard of or something? Then I read the package and it says it’s to store 2 convenience store musubis in. As if I’d feed my kids musubi from 7-Eleven! Ech!!

Close-up of the accessories. Aren’t those doggie straps so cute?? There were chicken ones too, but one of them clucked at me rudely and I put it back. The nerve of chickens, I swear.

Finally, we get to my lunch. Whew, I sure had a lot to talk about today. I have to start writing down my topics as I think of them. Today I had mapo tofu with rice in one of my new boxes. I love this box! It fit a perfect amount of food for me and the blue strap I bought came in really handy. In the second tier I just dumped a lot of blueberries in cause the pack I bought at Costco was huge and decently priced, so I have a lot of berry eating to do.

We recently discovered that Baby Girl and Buddy find Hawaiian music incredibly amusing. My boss gave me a spare CD of some of her favorite Hawaiian songs and with them being obsessed with Eggman’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow, they make me play it all the time now. There’s a version of No Ke Ano Ahiahi that makes them break out in fits of giggles and then yell at me to start the song again. This CD has provided many hours (yes, I said hours) of car entertainment, so Auntie B scores points with my kiddies.

When I first brought it home Mr. Pikko immediately began joking that “Mommy’s boss is giving her mixed tapes.” This led to me and my cousin Jenn lamenting about how kids will never understand how much work it was to get music when we were growing up. If you had the standard boombox and heard your favorite song come on while you were pretending to clean your room, you had to dash to the radio to hit Play and Record at the same time. If you had the mega uber boombox with two tape decks (holy crap), you could move songs from one tape to another! (seriously, holy crap!) This is a sure sign I am getting old. I can already hear myself yelling at my kids when they’re older…

YOU KNOW, THERE WASN’T ALWAYS TIVO. IN MY DAY WE HAD TO USE THE REWIND BUTTON ON THE BETAMAX AND LET ME TELL YOU, IT SUCKED!